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Austin, Anthony A. and Yule, Frances "Mother Shipton, The Missing Prophecies. A Collection of Prophecies for the next thousand years". Black Rabbit Press, Findon, England, 2003. Pbk, 104pp. Illus. £9.95. ISBN 0-9540298-2-8

This is another of Black Rabbit's "dare you take it seriously" publications. The first section reprints some / all of the original prophesies of "Mother Shipton" aka Ursula Sonthiel, as amended edited and added to by Charles Hindley in the nineteenth century. This brief section is then followed by Anthony Austin's rendition of "Frances Yule's" prophesies which take up the bulk of the book. These comprise some 375 verses done into "centuries" of 100 (with the fourth having but 75.) The Austin / Yule section attempts to fill in what the Anthony Austin regards as the "gaps" in the "original" Mother Shipton" prophecies. The final sections of the book are an attempt to put the prophesies into chronological order (with dates) and some miscellaneous notes and addenda. For some reason an anti war on Iraq poem (lifted from the Internet) and two pages of Google results are also included for good measure.

The entire volume is, of course, tosh from start to finish. And whilst the Shipton / Hindley verses have a certain pleasure of the text, the Austin / Yule ones are (to this reviewer anyway) unreadable en masse. As is the case with these and similar books of prophetic verses (Nostrodamus and others) the prophecies are mainly couched in such general and vague terms that they could be taken to refer to a wide range of events. As befits such "prophecies" there are the usual earth shattering events, both cosmological and meteorological, disasters, wars, famines, saviours, and so forth. Given the time span neither the authors or present day readers will be around to check out whether any of these prognostications come true or not. And to be honest, I doubt very much if anyone will be bothering to find out.

In summary, not only impossible to take seriously, but totally lacking in good laughs as well. A conceptual joke methinks.

3/10

Richard Alexander